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How to HARO Get Media Coverage

Now we're going to talk about one of my favorite free resource is called help a reporter out short short hand for that as hero that's what most people in business call and that's what I'm gonna call it does help a reporter out is really long so hero is a free service totally free for your youth that connects journalists and bloggers sources so it started out as a list serv like god in the beginning of my career so ten to fifteen years ago um I was actually on their list sir when it was like super low tech and those were thing and what happens is that you can sign up either as a source or you can sign up as a journalist and um what they do is that the journalists in the bloggers and producers and radio show people and like all kinds of people in the media send into herro people articles they're working on and what they're looking for in a resource so they're called queries and I'm gonna show you an example in just a second and then when you're a source you can sign up to get three daily...

emails that come out so morning afternoon and then the end of the day that have a list of all of these different opportunities I would say usually there's forty different media opportunities may be more in these hero roundups and they haven't broken down by category and then links to the different kinds of things that you're looking for us you can scan the email and find opportunities again totally free help a reporter dot com sign up is a source now they do have a now a paid service that you can upgrade tio I don't recommend it it really don't recommend it you don't need it we use the free service and we have gotten amazing press for a client's using hero on they also know people we looked at dr samantha at the very beginning the introduction a piece that she had I think it was in the humana newsletter then went out like tens of thousands of people that came through harrow opportunity so there's so much you can do here so let's let's look at a query so this is a snapshot of just one section so I said forty that's play too low this is the business and finance section from a helper reporter email that I got again there's three of these that come a day so you can see they have the different you know story ideas that they're working with and then you click on these hyperlinks and if you go down they have more detail so just read a couple off of these examples of minimum viable products and then you see entrepreneur they tell you what's the story about and who's covering us you could just glance and see what's relevant to you is in a media outlet you care about I see your face like what this's amazing it is it is really great on refinery twenty nine how to start investing in your twenties how does unemployment affect health fast company online seeking an expert on online networking anonymous when you see anonymous I mean that could be like just thie today's show glamour like anonymous means big right you only go anonymous when you're so big because people they get so many responses that they don't want you like reaching out to them and I will say that big taboo big taboo so if you see the refinery twenty nine on here through harrow they give you an email address once your sign up to like for each query that you would respond tio you should never go on email that person directly you have no idea the fury you bring upon yourself if you do that so definitely you know follow the guidelines so what happens when you click on this you get um guidelines so they'll tell you who the outlet is what their deadline is I always say ignore the deadline and try to get your pitch turn around within thirty minutes so um you know don't wait jump on it fast because we're going to get a ton of queries yeah we'll talk about how to manage that because that could be a little bit much and that's one of the things that holds people back a lot and it will also tell you specifically what they're looking for specifically what they're looking for so in there they might say for instance, in the online networking you know they might say really specifically we're looking for your unconventional tips and how you can network with people online please send us what your name you're you're al and three tips so you literally want to send your name you're you're home the three tips you want to follow their guidelines to the letter other times you'll get a downer because you'll see something that feels like a great fit and they'll say something like we want to see licensed psychologist on whatever only so they'll give credentials so if you don't have that credential, don't bother the best thing I can tell you about using help a reporter is once you sign up it's like scan and respond but really you want to find things that feel like a perfect fit because there's way too many opportunities that will come to you I see you nodding along rigid used here alright there's way too many opportunities that will come to you and you'll feel totally overwhelmed another tip here is that um if you get an email from them and it's like their morning queries and you miss it you know monday they e mail you a bunch of queries it's tuesday don't even open that email that is where dreams go to die right you you're too late delete groupon there will be another great opportunity and hero you wanna look now I will say like if if you are trying to come up with ideas of things to pitch and with the trends are you can open it and see like what's hot what are people covering if you want to scan the headlines for your own headline ideas totally fine steel like a journalist I love it but what you don't want to dio is respond to something that's a few days old because it's just it's hold a waste of your time so here's that clip that I was lying about that samantha brody had in the humanity email so they actually sent this out to her email they put in our website samantha is a naturopath physician so for her this was a perfect fit and so I wanted to use this one because we know people who have used hero to be in you know, cnn dot com and like other kinds huffingtonpost we've actually done a couple things with huffingtonpost through hero and there's some bigger publications they're on there but also sometimes there's some niche down publications that really speak to your target audience and so this is a great way to discover those another thing I told you not to pitch somebody off hero but you if you see somebody and you're like oh, they're waiting for this really cool media outlet I didn't know about it they're talking about we had a client, actually we pitch but we could get out of this who did like many design it was a block called food fanatic so that might were cruel for you on dh so many design and we pitched in the hero got accepted but if it didn't because she does have a menu project in her portfolio maybe we could have gone and pitched them something else three months later so you can use it to build your media list and build your idea database but you don't want to go ahead and go behind harrow and go and try to circumvent their process you talk about submitting and you're submitting the earl is that your website or your media? Your web sage here website okay, yeah didn't know if you submit the weedy media pager or you're usually for hero it isn't so much about the media paint coming to usually looking for people with expert advice okay? And so you don't necessarily need that as much as you do when you do product yeah that it can help but it's not as necessary so really briefly of the benefits of hero you know its potential to get covered by major media outlets thes air people on a deadline they need another piece for a story or they've already still the story idea to their editors and they need to fill the content they're looking for sources so this is huge potential to respond and get into major media and also it's a place where the journalists are really pro actively looking for different sources you know they're looking for you like you don't have a better opportunity than this the drawback so we've covered these a little bit you know that the frequency of thes herro e mails could be totally overwhelming and so that's why it's like scan and move on don't feel like you need to catch up with every e mail if I don't see one within you know, thirty minutes I just delete it I know there's going to be another opportunity so don't feel like you have to make it your full time job to monitor help a reporter it's not necessary and you don't have to do that to get great results and then you know it's not as easy to create templates for this so you have to respond as quickly as you can like I like to say by the same day sometimes the next day works but anything longer than it's too long so if you don't have like thirty minutes to jot something off and send it over, you know it's a little bit harder so that's where I think it's important to find that perfect match no, what do I want to be known for? Who do I want to reach? And because a lot of things will come through hero that you're like all I could do that I could speak to that I see you nodding again have you submitted with hero before? Yeah, probably. I don't find anything that often. That is perfect, but I have submitted, like, three or four thing. Have you been picked up throughout? Yeah, I am not yet. Okay cool potential spot in another book nice got a book out of it and um a potential have a very large article that we're still working out the details ofthe little snow awesome and how many times it both of you submitted like how often you see emmet was here ratio I've probably only submitted like five or six times because I'm really probably because the first I probably did like three or four at the beginning and gotten no response her and so now I'm really selective and what I take time to respond to yeah what about you I actually haven't opened any of the hero emails for a couple of years because they just got so overwhelmed by them okay five to you so I'm gonna start opening that yeah yeah yeah okay cool well that bears up because I think the pitch to acceptance ratio and harrow is media that's what I would consider it so some of the things to have better results actually think of a slight on this on the best practices is you know, finding that match being quick but I will say about your submission is a lot of people using hero they want something that they can't just pull and plug and so the work that we did in the first couple of lessons about, you know, speaking in a language of media doing things that are headline worthy so an example of how you might modify that for hero is if somebody asks you for three tips you really want to pull it out and say my top three tips are or give them a takeaway you know so working with with yours what's a hair query that you were working with you remember um somebody was looking for different recipe ideas with like medicinal herb great great and so you sent over a few different herbs is that we did was she had a list of the herbs that she she wanted recipes for and so I just sent her some ideas of where they always are yeah and that's great because you're not going to send over that's a long one for recipes so what I might think about there and maybe you do this is like looking at the names of your recipes so using those tricks the liberation the seasonal making those written names little spicier you know makes exactly so it's really easy to dio another thing too is thinking about if you're going to be quoted in an article what would be a pull quote what would that look like what would be a message that you want to walk away with so making that that's something they can pull out and use really easily can help so much when you're doing hero and some of it's just practice on using those techniques so that's how you can take some of those techniques sound writing her headlines and applying them to your tips four um yes oh herro it's really about checking in when you can you know, responding and practicing so those techniques you know, one of the things that I d'oh for my block that I don't is much do for the media because I have a partner in my business maggie hassler she's her account director and she does all of the pitching for us and she is just a whiz with this language her language is just so sweet and so q and she just has a genius way of you know, speaking in the media's language he's been doing it for a long time um and we've worked together actually she works for me what we had worked together like eight years ago you know, she's like I'm sorry like I love my maggie but what I wanted to say is is because she does a lot of the pitching so one of the things I used to do with my blogging to keep it fresh is I would give myself creative challenges so you can do this to here to like, you know, when you're writing something can you take one of the techniques that we've talked about applying a liberation or using seasonal trends and just play with them outside of just creating your submission so that when you have something to dio you're in practice and that will just it'll make everything more fun because the the's techniques that editors air using our time tested techniques for getting people to read your content so that could be a really good way to practices so when something comes through you can you can jump on it any other questions about how how hero works yeah do you think the time of the week or the time of the month where there's just a lot more requests than other times or is it just consistent across the board it's a solution heroic I was a better word it's like an idea tornadoes it's an email where they're telling you exactly what they need help with right so it's ten times better than just slamming people that you're hoping to work for because you don't know if they're gonna want any of your ideas this is very targeted it seems like the best use of time I don't know that I agree with that because like when we talk about the ratio of being medium I mean doing a guest post is medium doing a podcast I would say high and these air really based on our experiences doing different kinds of pitches so because the thing is is they're getting so many responses back and there's a lot of competition you're always going to be up against a lot of competition so you shouldn't let them let that stop you another thing is you know you're not you're not able to do a lot of temple at work here there's a lot of customization they're looking for something specific and so if you were a person who's great at rolling with it in the moment and coming up with great language on the moment or it's okay for you to like interrupt your work and come up with a pitch it depends how you work for some people this is really great and really easy frankly I'm not a planner I'm in in the moment in the flow kind of this is an opportunity um I want to work on it I don't like having things on my calendar you know if you put something on my calendar I get like tense so I would much rather get a hero and just drop everything and do it but that is not the same like if you're at home and you're creative and you're having all your creative time and you don't want to be checking your email this may not be the best thing to be trying to keep up and focus your efforts around so it depends on your personal style it's just a skin thing there are so many pitches and I find it's gonna be different for everybody of course but I find like I kind of have to check in all the categories because you just never know and so you're looking through you know, two hundred u have to skim two hundred things and most of the time there's nothing there that you know that he's actually appropriate for me so it's a lot of time up front to even find one good opportunity but when you do find one it could be great and I will say that if you have an area that's really focused so if you're really targeted in the conversation that you're having I'm the same way you are like I have to skim everything you never know what's going to come up but that's not true for everyone and so there's general categories and when you sign up you can actually opt into specific emails so what I would say is if there is one that you know you want opted for just that one but if you think you want to or more just get the one because otherwise then instead of getting three emails a day you're getting six or nine or something like that and that's it was terrible it's a little too much I wouldn't recommend that teo at all so I want to see a next show of hands who's gonna give herro maybe another shot another try silver border awesome so do you definitely want to take action help a reporter dot com sign up for your account scan for your opportunities and respond to the ones that feel like a really good match any final questions on hero before we move on help so I didn't actually have a question eso se you send in a harrow query and maybe the reporter asked follows up and then you don't hear anything is it appropriate? You know you said don't pitch outside of that you know if you mean if they don't respond obviously probably don't but so if they ask you a follow up question and you send it back you could absolutely follow up with them in that case so with harrow it's one where you know I didn't have pitch follow up on one two, two weeks like I did with all the other lessons that we have so in general you send it in and although we have tweeted a couple people so maybe it kind of depends how after they are on twitter you want to use judgment there but if they respond to you can absolutely follow up now you usually won't be told if they use it so you want to monitor for it and make sure you're looking for it yeah I'm really glad you asked that question because often you know something will come through and all of a sudden it comes out there so whatever menace you know setting up google or it's your name for your business name but also what we've done is we have a spreadsheet so maggie, my business partner and I we have a spreadsheet of all the pitches we have and we have a link to a google search that we would use usually using either the name of the person or the name of the publication. So if you're working with something some person on harrow, you've pitched a person and a publication. Then you could just do a quick search for them and and look and see if it comes up. So that's, really important that you're monitoring for your placements can also sometimes find out when you have a spike of traffic and you're looking in your web analytics. Yeah, time everywhere. Okay, thank you so much for that question.